


Sold You Back Your Outrage

by Mosca



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Character Study, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Queer Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the first time in Ben's life that he hasn't returned Tanith's calls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sold You Back Your Outrage

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in an hour, immediately after watching the TV broadcast of the senior men's free skate at the 2007 US National Figure Skating Championships. I originally posted it to my Livejournal in January 2007.
> 
> Thanks to [Sandyk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandyk) for the beta. The title and epigraph are from "Avalanche" by Thea Gilmore. I was also inspired by [this picture,](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/picfor1000/challenge%205/earth/e12.jpg) my assignment in the 2007 [A Picture is Worth 1000 Words](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/) challenge.
> 
> This fic contains depictions of institutional homophobia.

_And who's gonna raise a hand_  
When all we were taught to do was dance  
Who'll be able to stand  
After this avalanche  
\- Thea Gilmore, "Avalanche"  
*

Angry and horrified is not the way you're supposed to feel after your fourth national figure skating title. But that was where Ben was, so after the men's free skate, calmly and without telling anyone until after the fact, he changed his plane ticket, rented a car, and made reservations at a lodge near a state park. There was too much snow to do any real climbing, but he could hike at the lower elevations. Easier on his back anyway. It didn't matter. What he wanted was to be outside and by himself. Commune with nature or whatever. It sounded so fake when people put it like that but so meaningful and real when he did it.

He hadn't brought his gear with him to Spokane. He'd been planning on it, in case he had time for an afternoon's communing, but Tanith had talked him out of it. She was probably still trying to talk him out of it now. 

He wasn't returning her calls. First time in eight years of partnership he'd stopped speaking to her for more than an hour. But speaking to her now would imply approving of her actions. 

He'd talk to her again when he got back to Detroit for practice. They'd be friends and partners again, goofing around and refining their free dance like nothing had happened. But he needed her to understand that he wasn't kidding when he said he was offended by the whole idea, offended as a straight man in a gay sport and offended on behalf of his friends who were gay and had the dignity not to pull closet-affirming stunts like this. She'd never seen him take a stand on anything; why would she think he'd do it now? But he couldn't shake the horror. If that meant this was a stand, then he was going to take it.

He'd skipped the men's free on purpose, gone out to a sports bar with Charlie White and Ben Okolski for a celebratory dinner. One of the TVs at the bar had gone to the ESPN2 skating coverage, and he'd tried to avoid watching, but it'd been hard to take his eyes off. He'd missed Evan's quad-triple, had to have Charlie tell him about it after the fact. The thing he did see, the thing burned in his eyes now as he drove to the state park, was Johnny Weir crying into his coach's shoulder, crying and crying and the assholes at ESPN had just kept showing it and showing it. "All right," Ben had said. "You motherfuckers made the faggot cry, you can cut to commercial."

Okolski, who'd had his back to the TV, had turned around to look. His face had gone white. "Oh," he'd said. "Jesus Christ."

So now Ben was on an unfamiliar highway in Eastern Washington, leaving a message on Merrie's voicemail to tell her he'd be home a few days late. He'd explain it all to her afterwards. She'd watched the men's coverage, certainly, and she might not understand why Ben had snapped this hard but she'd get it. 

She'd get it the way Tanith apparently never would. Tanith was adamant that it didn't mean anything. "We'll play the game for a few months, maybe a year," she'd explained. "A year when Evan will be able to keep the press out of his personal life and focus on his skating. And I'm willing to do that for him. I honestly don't see what the objection is."

Ben had opened his mouth to shout at her, but he wasn't that kind of guy. On the ice, he was a fighter, but in life, he backed down. He told himself that he had to let Tanith live her life and make her mistakes. That was how they had stayed together as a team for so long: she had her life and he had his. But there was having a life, and then there was having a life on national television, sitting there in the stands watching your gay best friend have the free skate of his life, letting the closed captions spit out that you're fucking doing him when you haven't, never have been, never will be because God _damn_ it, Tanith, the man is gay and yes, you've had a few one-night stands and throwaway boyfriends but that is not enough of an excuse. If Ben were another kind of guy, he would have said all that out loud, let Charlie and Okolski know the extent of it. But all he'd been able to say, all he'd been able to let them know, was, "God, I wish she hadn't done that."

He'd been half drunk when he'd changed his plane ticket. But there was truth at the bottom of a pint glass of beer, and he'd known in the morning that his instincts were smarter than he was. He'd held himself together enough to skate at the gala, to smile and say the right things to the press, to keep himself from getting a mean look in his eyes when she spoke. She'd kept asking him what was wrong with him. Put that "with you" on the end like it couldn't possibly be something the matter with her.

On the ice, he would use this anger, use it to win them gold at Worlds, to show everyone that it was possible to do this clean and honest even when it was difficult. Evan was still going to lose the war of personality. Johnny'd had that sewn up for years, and it didn't matter how many pretty girls Evan pretended to date. He'd win more points from the fanbase if he hooked up with that guy from Grey's Anatomy.

Early evening, and Ben found the winding road to the lodge, paid his fees, parked, got his key. The sun was setting over the mountains, turning the rocks crimson and the snow pink. He'd walk into it tomorrow with his new boots and his head full of steam.


End file.
